Physician: I have viewed your urine, and the hypostasis, / Thick and obscure, doth make the danger great.

(theology) The essential person, specifically the single person of Christ (as distinguished from his two ‘natures’, human and divine), or of the three ‘persons’ of the Trinity (comprising a single ‘essence’). [from 16th c.]

1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:

What did the God who hammered the universe together have to do with virtue, redemption, the strange doctrine of hypostasis?

2000, Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, Harper 2004, p. 69:

As Gregory of Nyssa had explained, the three hypostases of Father, Son, and Spirit were not objective facts but simply “terms that we use” to express the way in which the “unnameable and unspeakable” divine nature (ousia) adapts itself to the limitations of our human minds.